Davidson, the second act

From certain angles, director Adam Davidson resembles a young Warren Beatty. His looks and casual dress seem to signal that he’s a movie guy -- not surprising, considering that he won an Oscar at the age of 25.

But watch him rehearsing a play. He might point at something or release a sudden chuckle -- and, if you know his father, Gordon, thoughts of Beatty are replaced by images of Adam’s dad, L.A.’s top theater guy.

While Gordon Davidson is in his last summer of a prolonged exit from the top job at Center Theatre Group after nearly 40 years, his 40-year-old son is suddenly visible on the L.A. theater scene. Adam Davidson is directing “Lessons,” a new play starring Hal Linden and Mare Winningham, at the Lee Strasberg Institute in West Hollywood.

“The passing of the torch,” notes Linden, who worked under Gordon Davidson’s direction in “Unfinished Stories” at CTG’s Mark Taper Forum in 1992.

“I think we mumble the same,” mumbles Adam Davidson, when asked about resemblances to his father. “And I’ve been trying for decades not to be....”

He doesn’t finish that thought.

“I wanted to blaze my own trail,” he says.

The younger Davidson saw a lot of theater as he grew up, not only at his father’s shop but elsewhere with his family -- including his mother, publicist Judi Davidson, and sister Rachel. “I’m sure a lot of times I was dragged there against my will,” he says.

As a young child, he says, recalling a favorite family story, he greeted the reappearance of the titular birds at a performance of “Swan Lake” with, “Oh no, not those swans again.”

Although he was in a few plays during middle school at Harvard School in Studio City and later at Kenyon College in Ohio, his first interest was film. At Harvard, he “got kicked out of French class often” because he couldn’t sit still, he says. But a French film about a similar kid, “The 400 Blows,” left him entranced.

At Palisades High School, “I found that playing football had more real drama” than theater. “It was a good release for teenage anger.” A 6-foot-1, 215-pound outside linebacker, he set a Kenyon record for quarterback sacks.

He went through a period of being bored by theater. “I thought it was too much talk, that the acting wasn’t real and truthful. I’m sure it was tied into feelings I had about the father who was missing in my life.”

His father was at the Taper “seven days a week,” Adam recalls. “I’m very proud of what he has accomplished and the people he has touched. To see your job can be your passion is wonderful to witness.”

Yet sometimes “it was hard to see him. There were definitely times when he was missing. I have no memories of playing catch with him.”

In a separate interview Gordon Davidson -- who never played football -- said he regrets missing moments in Adam’s life. He remembers that he arrived at a Palisades High football game -- after it was over.

“I would see my dad more when I was living in New York,” Adam says. By then, he was a graduate student in film at Columbia University. Gordon Davidson frequently traveled to New York for professional reasons and checked in with his son.

Living on the other side of the country, he was “in a little less of the shadow” cast by his father in L.A. “I needed that distance.”

He flourished. In 1990, a short film he made, “The Lunch Date,” won the Palme d’Or for best short film at the Cannes Film Festival, a student Oscar and in 1991, an Academy Award for best short film.

When he won, he was already writing a movie, about a real-life executive training camp in Japan, for director Milos Forman. Six months later, four days before the start of shooting, the film was canceled due to what Davidson calls “political trouble in Japan.”

Since then, Davidson has earned most of his credits and income in episodic TV, including a “Law & Order” that netted him a Directors Guild nomination. He wrote and directed the feature film “Way Past Cool,” which played only one week in theaters -- and only in New York.

More recently, Davidson has directed Kate Burton, the wife of his father’s replacement Michael Ritchie, on episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy,” and Ritchie came to the set once to observe. But Davidson has known Ritchie for a long time -- Rachel used to work with Ritchie at Williamstown Theatre Festival.

“I always liked that film was preserved,” Davidson says. But with theater, “I liked that you just needed a room, a script and actors. There is something about the exploration you do with a new play, going deeper and deeper, that satisfied all my curiosities and interests.” He has staged two other plays at the Strasberg and worked with New York-based Naked Angels.

He was brought to Wendy Graf’s “Lessons,” about an aging man who decides to finally have a bar mitzvah and the disillusioned rabbi who tutors him, by a producer who since left the project. But Davidson stuck with it over a two-year process.

Rehearsing “Lessons,” Linden questioned Davidson’s choice of his costume -- white tennis shoes and a sport coat? Davidson showed a cellphone photo of his father wearing such an ensemble to Linden, who then understood, Davidson says, that it was “a nod to the old man.”

Gordon Davidson says he is proud that his son “cut his own swath.”

But he admits that his “biggest thrill” from his son’s career is Adam’s “unassuming start at doing stage work. It’s very close to my heart.”